In general, I like Russell’s tutorial movies, and it;s great that he makes them availabnle to us. But the "Advanced Extract" movie is one of the exceptions.
Extracting hair et al can be very difficult. But his movie has a white background, and a relatively uncomplicated subject to extract. Maybe I’m missing something, but I didn’t consider this movie a "winner".
So what am I missing?????
Ron Hirsch
This movie, in my opinion, demonstrates the magic wand tool as well as the extract filter. Even though it combines them to show a cool way to use alpha channels to set the selection in the Extract Filter, and even though that process may not be beneficial for this particular task, what it DOES do is demonstrate different ways of isolating a subject/object. In this case, it’s two techniques combined in one.
I wasn’t suggesting that the poster use the "concert" method, but one of the things I like to use when hair or leaves are involved is the extract filter as a starting point. This movie demonstrates it quite well, as well as the magic wand. That’s why I suggested it.
Now more advanced users know that the technique one will use really depends on the image, it’s intent, and familiarity with photoshop tools. Pen tool? Maybe. But we have no more data to go on than there is hair or leaves. I think these are decent starting points, given that we don’t know the image composition nor its intent.
<shrug>
Peace,
Tony
Tony,
Please don’t misunderstand me. I think that Russell’s movies are a great bonus to all Photoshop Users. And, it’s true that the movie in question does provide some good PS techniques. But as you know, extracting hair can be a real task.
Ron
<nodding> True Ron. And fwiw, I didn’t misunderstand – I knew what you meant. I took that opportunity to further explain to the poster reasons for that particular recommendation. Without seeing the picture, it’d be too hard to say "oh, just do this and boom, you’re done." I figured this was the shortest distance between two points.
Peace,
Tony
There is no one-click recipe, of course, but you should try reading up on and experimenting with the Background Eraser tool. Though it doesn’t directly "make a selection," it’s very powerful for what you’re trying to do.
Thanks for the point. I just started working with the Background Eraser tool. It has some great possiblilties.
This is what I did:
1. Created a duplicate layer.
2. Used the Background Eraser with a small % setting to separate the background from the hair. Worked at 400% size so I could see all the pixels.
3. Used the Magnetic Lasso to select the entire subject This kept all the hair, even some strands against the background. This was done so the normal eraser could be used to get rid of the rest of the background.
4. Inverted the selection
5. Used the normal eraser to remove the rest of the background.
6. Used blur on the original background layer to throw it out of focus.
7. Put the duplicate layer on top.
Stunning result — even better than normal selection.
Thanks again.
___
Wil
